Museum meeting point for creative children’s parties (1976)

Bergeryk – Nobody knows exactly how many museums there are in the Netherlands. It must be an impressive number, because almost every municipality has a special building, where the most wonderful things are displayed. Whether it concerns paintings, shells, antiques, toys, pipes or apothecary jars, there is a special museum for everything.

Only ….. what can be seen hangs at a safe distance behind a fence or is carefully hidden in a glass display case, because you are not allowed to touch anything.
Things are different in the Muzen Museum in Bergeyk in Brabant. Mothers from all over the area come here with a bunch of toddlers to celebrate creative birthday parties.

Encouraged by Annet Teunissen van Manen-Zanen, the founder, owner and tour guide of the museum, the muse concentum just started out of pure hobby, the children remove folkloric musical instruments from the wall, play them and try to make them.

Most toddlers can’t get enough of the wind drum, an instrument invented in the museum itself, which consists of an empty can or a plastic cup, over which a piece of balloon is stretched. It can not only be drummed but also blown and the latter makes such a penetrating sound that even almost deaf people can hear it.

In addition to making music, children and adults can paint to their heart’s content using the most diverse examples, or make wall hangings from the colourful waste cloths from the nearby De Ploeg fabric factory.
In the Muzen Museum, housed in the brightly painted ruins of a burned-out cinema, the work of other amateurs can first be viewed. The emphasis is on the work of women and children because, according to Annet, they have so little opportunity to exhibit elsewhere.

The point of departure for the museum, which she started out of pure passion when her six children were adults, is that anyone who has made something nice in their spare time – if space permits – can exhibit it for a while. There are no commissions involved because Annet arranges everything herself.

Five years ago, the Bergeyk cinema, which had been empty for years, was made available to her free of charge by the municipality. But the cooperation also ended there, because she had to take care of the rest alone.

The experiment was initially regarded as rather sceptical by her husband, because you simply have to wait and see whether a cultural initiative in a Brabant village is just as successful as in the bustling Amsterdam where they came from.

It was a success, because in the five years that the Muzen Museum has now been in existence this summer, it has attracted tens of thousands of visitors. Not only that, even French and German television came to Bergeyk to make a documentary of this unique museum, where you can not only can view everything, but also touch, play and use it to gain inspiration for a work of art to be made on site.